The fruits of bold plans

Indira Gandhi International Airport is India's busiest airport.

Countries need to ease visa restrictions and increase flights to attract more Indian tourists, said Omri Morgenshtern, CEO of travel and booking site Agoda. He called the country a “tourism boom” and said it was now “the largest growing outbound destination.” No other country’s tourism industry is growing as fast as India’s, he said, not just in terms of the number of people traveling, but also in the country’s continued spending of billions of dollars on developing its aviation industry and strengthening its position as a tourism hub.

India is making a series of bold investments in infrastructure improvements and aviation expansion. According to Reuters , the Indian government has announced plans to spend 980 billion rupees ($11.9 billion) by 2025 to build and modernize domestic airports, including Noida International Airport, in the city of Jewar in Uttar Pradesh state, which is expected to open in 2024, poised to become Asia's largest airport and will boost connectivity to and from the greater Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) and Western Uttar Pradesh.

“The plans that India has been working on domestically are now starting to bear fruit,” said Gary Bowerman, founder of Check-in Asia, a research and marketing firm focused on tourism. “The country will have more airports, more terminals, more modern and convenient infrastructure than it did a decade ago.”

Since 2017, at least 73 airports have been launched under the plan to connect India’s regions. Meanwhile, Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport has entered the list of the world ’s 10 busiest international airports for the first time, with 59.5 million passengers passing through in 2022. Morgenshtern said the increase in outbound travel from India is the result of investment not only by the government but also by private airlines. “I think there’s a combination of the government investing in airports and the airlines themselves making very bold moves to increase capacity,” he told CNN .

Air India has made moves to facilitate increased tourism in India, purchasing nearly 500 new aircraft, the largest number ever purchased by an airline in a single order. Over the past two years, the airline has also increased frequencies on existing routes and added several new routes to major destinations in Europe and the US. Air India is not the only airline making such a bold move. Earlier in June, low-cost carrier Indigo announced the addition of 174 new weekly flights and six new destinations across Africa and Asia. “To meet the growing demand for air travel, India has also expanded its aircraft leasing programme for both domestic and international routes,” Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said at the recent CAPA India Aviation Summit.

To attract more international tourists, Morgenshtern suggested that countries ease visa restrictions and increase flights from India. Based on data collected by Agoda, Indians are now traveling to a wider variety of countries. Morgenshtern also said that if you look at a place like Europe, you will see more of them going to France or Switzerland. Those are two countries that were not in the top 10 destinations for Indians before the pandemic.

When it comes to Southeast Asia, the top countries Indians travel to are pretty much the same as they were five years ago, but the numbers have increased. More Indians are going to Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia. Indian tourism to Vietnam, for example, is expected to increase by at least 1,000% compared to pre-pandemic levels. Southeast Asia as a whole is clearly the top destination for Indian travelers. “When we talk to travel agencies, they recognize India as a growing power and they all have plans,” Morgenshtern says.

HONG HANH

Source